Tama Lake Ruins in Black and White

The Ruins on Tama Lake changed little since the last time I came to visit. Perhaps the wooden huts of the Red Blossom restaurant have canted a little further towards collapse, and the walls of the Akasaka love hotel were holed and splintered a little more. A new fence has gone up, with warnings of CCTV cameras watching 24/7. Wires dangle from the mock cameras, now only effective as scarecrows to the masses.

Red Blossom huts slide down the hillside in slow motion.

SY and I revisited these spots just as winter was ending and spring was taking hold this year, on a 4-hour bike round-trip out of Tokyo. While I darted in and out of the familiar ruins, she sat and pulled seed-pods out of her socks. The grass there is thick with them, and they cling to fabric in their hundreds. When you pick them off, you get sticky sappy fingers.

This is my first post all in Black and White. One thing I notice is how forgiving Black and White is. A shot I would`ve considered below par in color changes considerably in black and white. Things that were distractingly colorful, or blandly uncolorful, can have a whole new life thanks to the de-contrasting/re-contrasting power of desaturation.

I`m sure there are many filters I could run on these photos to make them even better, but simply upping contrast and clipping blacks and whites has had a nice result I feel.